Taking Action by Brian Tracy

The Impact of Action

The world seems to belong to those who reach out and grab it with both hands.

It belongs to those who do something rather than just wish and hope and plan

and pray, and intend to do something someday, when everything is just right.

Successful people are not necessarily those who make the right decisions all

the time. No one can do that, no matter how smart he is. But once successful

people have made a decision, they begin moving toward their objectives stepby-

step, and they begin to get feedback or signals to tell them where they’re

off course and when course corrections are necessary. As they take action and

move toward their goals, they continually get new information that enables

them to adjust their plans in large and small ways.

It’s important to understand that life is a series of approximations and course

adjustments. Let me explain. When an airplane leaves Chicago for Los Angeles,

it is off course 99 percent of the time. This is normal and natural and to be

expected. The pilot makes continual course corrections, a little to the north, a

little to the south. The pilot continually adjusts altitude and throttle. And sure

enough, several hours later, the plane touches down at exactly the time

predicted when it first became airborne upon leaving Chicago. The entire

journey has been a process of approximations and course adjustments.

What’s the big problem? The big problem is that there are no guarantees in life.

Everything you do¾even crossing the street¾is filled with uncertainty. You can

never be completely sure that any action or behavior is going to bring about

the desired result. There is always a risk. And where there is risk, there is fear.

And whatever you think about grows in your mind and heart. People who think

continually about the risks involved in any undertaking soon become

preoccupied with fears and doubts and anxieties that conspire to hold them

back from trying in the first place.

Launch!

At Babson College, in a 12-year study into the reasons for success, researchers

concluded that virtually all success was based on what they called the “corridor

principle.” They likened achieving success to proceeding down a corridor in life.

Each of us stands at the entrance to this corridor, looking into the darkness,

and we see the corridor disappear into the distance. The researchers said that

the difference between the successes and the failures in their study could be

summarized by the one word launch! Successful people were willing to launch

themselves down the corridor of opportunity without any guarantee of what

would occur. They were willing to risk uncertainty and overcome the normal

fears and doubts that hold the great majority in place.

And the remarkable thing is that as you move down the corridor of life, new

doors of opportunity open up on both sides of you. However, you would not

have seen those doors if you had not moved down the corridor. They would not

have opened up for you if you had waited for some assurance before stepping

out in faith and taking action.

The Confucian saying “A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single

step” simply means that great accomplishments begin with your willingness to

face the inevitable uncertainty of any new enterprise and step out boldly in the

direction of your goal.

Take a Leap of Faith

Not long ago, a couple came to me with a problem. He was working for a

company owned by his family in which he was bitterly unhappy. It was full of

politics and backbiting and negativity, and he was stressed out and hated his

job. He wanted to do something else but had no job offers or potential

alternatives to his current position. He asked me for my advice on what to do.

I explained to him that there is a “vacuum theory of prosperity,” which says

that when you create a vacuum of any kind, nature rushes to fill it. In his case,

this meant that as long as he stayed at his current job, there was no way that

he could recognize other possibilities, and there was no way that other

opportunities could find him. I told him to take a giant leap of faith and just

walk away from his current job with no lifeline or safety net. I assured him that

if he did, all kinds of things would open up for him that he simply couldn’t see

while he was locked up in his current situation.

He took my advice. He quit his job. The members of his family became very

angry and told him that he would be unemployable outside of their business.

But he stuck to his guns. He went home, took a few days off and began to

think about his experience and his skills and how they could best be applied to

other jobs in other companies.

Within two weeks, without raising a finger, he had two job offers from other

companies, both paying substantially more than he was getting before, and

both offering all kinds of opportunities that were vastly superior to the job he

had walked away from. As soon as the word had gotten out in the marketplace

that he was available, other company owners, having worked with him and his

company in the past, were eager to open doors for him. As he moved down the

corridor of life, he began to see possibilities that he had been missing

completely by limiting himself to where he was.

Take Chances

If you want to be more successful faster, just do or try more things. Take more

action; get busier. Start a little earlier; work a little harder; stay a little later.

Put the odds in your favor. According to the Law of Probability, the more things

you try, the more likely it is that you will try the one thing that will make all the

difference.

I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more

chances. Be more active. Show up more often.

Tom Peters, the best-selling author of In Search of Excellence and other

business books, found that a key quality of the top executives in his study was

a “bias for action.” Their motto seemed to be, “Ready, aim, fire.” Their attitude

toward business was summarized in the words, “Do it, fix it, try it.” They

realized that the future belongs to the action-oriented, to the risk taker.

Top people know, as General Douglas MacArthur once said, “There is no

security in life, only opportunity.” And the interesting thing is this: If you seek

for opportunity, you’ll end up with all the security you need. However, if you

seek for security, you’ll end up with neither opportunity nor security. The proof

of this is all around us, in the downsizing and reconstructing of corporations,

where thousands of men and women who sought security are finding

themselves unemployed for long periods of time.

There is a “momentum principle of success,” which is very important to you it’s

derived from two physical laws, the Law of Momentum and the Law of Inertia,

and it applies equally well to everything that you accomplish and fail to

accomplish.

In physics, the Law of Momentum says that a body in motion tends to remain

in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. The Law of Inertia, on the

other hand, says that a body at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon

by an outside force.

In their simplest terms, as they apply to you and your life, those laws say that

if you stay in motion toward something that is important to you, it’s much

easier to continue making progress than it is if you stop somewhere along the

way and have to start again. When you look at successful people, you find that

they are very much like the plate spinners in the circus. They get things

started; they get the plates spinning. They continually keep them spinning,

knowing that if a plate falls off, or something comes to a halt, it’s much harder

to get it restarted than it is to keep it going in the first place.

Self-Discipline

Once you have a goal and a plan, get going! And once you start moving toward

your goal, don’t stop. Do something every day to move you closer toward your

goal. Don’t let the size of the goal or the amount of time required to accomplish

it faze you or hold you back. During your planning process, break down the

goal into small tasks and activities that you can engage in every day. You don’t

have to do a lot, but every day, every week, every month you should be

making progress, by completing your predetermined tasks and activities, in the

direction of your clearly defined objectives.

And here’s where the rubber meets the road. The most important single quality

for success is self-discipline it’s the ability to make yourself do what you should

do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

Let me break down that definition of self-discipline. First, it’s the ability to

make yourself. This means that you have to use strength and willpower to

force yourself into motion, to break the power of inertia that holds you back.

Second, do what you should do, when you should do it. This means that you

make a plan, set a schedule, and then do what you say you’ll do. You do it

when you say you’ll do it. You keep your promises to yourself and to others.

The third part of this definition is whether you feel like it or not. You see,

anyone can do anything if he feels like it, if he wants to do it because it makes

him happy, if he is well-rested and has lots of time. However, the true test of

character is when you do something that you know you must do whether you

feel like it or not¾especially when you don’t like it at all.

In fact, you can tell how badly you really want something, and what you’re

really made of as a person, by how capable you are of taking action in the

direction of your goals and dreams even when you feel tired and discouraged

and disappointed and you don’t seem to be making any progress. And very

often, this is the exact time when you will break through to great achievement.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “When the night is darkest, the stars come

out.” Your ability to endure, to continue taking action, step-by-step, in the

direction of your dreams, is what will ultimately assure your success. If you

keep on keeping on, nothing can stop you.

Preparing for the Future

Earl Nightingale once said that if a person does not prepare for his success,

when his opportunity comes, it will only make him look foolish. You’ve probably

heard it said repeatedly that luck is what happens when preparedness meets

opportunity. Only when you’ve paid the price to be ready for your success are

you in a position to take advantage of your opportunities when they arise. And

the most remarkable thing is this: The very act of preparation attracts to you,

like iron filings to a magnet, opportunities to use that preparation to advance in

your life. You’ll seldom learn anything of value, or prepare yourself in any area,

without soon having a chance to use your new knowledge and your new skills

to move ahead more rapidly.

There is a series of things that you can do to become ready for success. All of

these activities require self-discipline and a good deal of faith. They require

self-discipline because the most normal and natural thing for people to do is to

try to get by without preparation. Instead of taking the time and making the

effort to be ready for their chance when it comes, they fool around, listen to

the radio, watch television, and then they try to wing it and dupe others into

thinking that they are more prepared than they really are. And since we’re all

transparent, since just about everyone can see through just about everyone

else, the unprepared person simply looks incompetent and foolish.

Preparation also requires a lot of faith because you have no proof in advance to

demonstrate that the preparation will pay off. You simply have to believe, deep

within yourself, that everything you do of a constructive nature will come back

to you in some way. You have to know that no good effort is ever wasted. You

have to be willing to sow for a long time before you reap, knowing that if you

do sow in quality and quantity, the reaping will come about inevitably with the

force of a law of nature.

Evaluate Yourself

Look at your work. Be honest and objective about your strengths and

weaknesses. What are you good at? What are you poor at? What is your major

area of weakness? What must you absolutely, positively be excellent at in order

to move to the top of your field? What one skill do you have that, because of

its weakness, may be holding you back from using all your other skills?

Norman Augustine, CEO of Martin Marietta Corporation, recently said that the

most important thing he learned in the last 10 years of business was that your

weakest important skill determines the extent to which you can use all of your

other talents and abilities. In looking at the hundreds of people who worked

below him in his corporation, he had found that people’s careers were largely

determined not only by their strengths but also by their weaknesses. The very

act of overcoming a particular weakness, through preparation and practice,

was enough to propel a person into the front ranks in his or her career.

In preparing for success, one of the very best questions that you can ask

yourself, continually, is: “What can I¾and only I¾do that, if done well, will

make a real difference in my career?” Usually, there is only one or perhaps two

answers to that question. Your ability to honestly appraise yourself and to

identify the particular skill area that may be holding you back is critical.

Remember when I said that preparation requires both self-discipline and faith.

It requires self-discipline because your natural tendency is to do more and

more of those things that come most easily to you, and to avoid those areas

that you don’t enjoy because you’re not particularly good at them yet. It

requires faith and character for you to admit your weaknesses in a particular

area and then resolve to go to work to develop yourself so those weaknesses

don’t hold you back.

The greatest change that has taken place in our society in the last 20 years is

that it’s become an information-based society. More than 50 percent of the

working population is in the business of processing information in some way.

This means that we now have a knowledge-based society and that you’re a

knowledge worker. You work with your mind, your brain, your mental talents

and abilities. You no longer “load that bale and tote that hay.” You work by

thinking and the more effectively you think and the better prepared you are

mentally, the more productive and positive you'll be.

The Golden Hour

One thing that has helped me enormously over the years is the habit of getting

up early in the morning and spending the first 30 to 60 minutes reading

something uplifting. You can read material that is educational or motivational

or even inspirational. Many people read spiritual literature. Henry Ward

Beecher once said, “The first hour is the rudder of the day.” This is often called

the “golden hour.” It’s the hour during which you program your mind and set

your emotional tone for the rest of the day. If you get up in the morning at

least two hours before you have to be at work, or before your first

appointment, and spend the first hour investing in your mind, taking in “mental

protein” rather than “mental candy,” reading good books rather than the

newspaper or magazines, your whole day will flow more smoothly. You’ll be

more positive and optimistic. You’ll be calmer, more confident and relaxed.

You’ll have a greater sense of control and well-being by the very act of reading

healthy material for the first hour of each day.

After just three days of reading for 30 to 60 minutes in the morning, you’ll

notice a profound difference. You’ll begin to develop what Dr. William Glasser

called a “positive addiction.” As a result of your early-morning reading, you’ll

feel so good about yourself and your life that you’ll develop a desire and

motivation to get up earlier, even though your tendency in the past was to

sleep in later. Try it and see. It’s a wonderful experience, and it can have a

profound impact on the rest of your life.

Plan and Prioritize

In the period of time before work, another thing that highly successful people

do is plan and prepare for their entire day. They review all of the tasks and

responsibilities that they have for the coming hours. They carefully make a list

of all their activities, and they set clear priorities on the activities. They decide

which things are most important to do, which are secondary in importance, and

which things should not be done at all unless all the other things are finished.

They then discipline themselves to start working on their most important tasks

and stay with them during the day until they’re complete.

Again, the natural tendency of the low performer is to do what is fun and easy

before he does what is hard and necessary. Underachievers always like to do

the little things first. They are drawn to the tasks that contribute very little to

their careers or future possibilities. But high achievers are not like that! High

achievers discipline themselves to start at the top of their list and to work on

the activities in order of importance, without diversion or distraction.

If you’re in sales, you should spend fully 80 percent of your time prospecting

until you’re so busy with presentations and proposals that you’ve no time left

to prospect at all. In fact, whenever you have money problems of any kind, you

should look upon them as a signal telling you that you need to reorder your

priorities and to prepare more thoroughly to accomplish more of the things that

contribute the greatest value to your life.

Eating Right

Another way to prepare for success is to eat right. Energy and dynamism are

essential to your success, and they’re possible only when you’re sharp and

alert. There are foods that are highly nutritious and that give you high energy

and vitality on through the day. Also, there are foods, which you eat usually by

habit, that are hard for your system to digest and that tire you out and make

you slow and drowsy in the morning and the afternoon.

The chief culprits in diets are foods containing fats of any kind. More and more

nutritional research suggests that fatty foods, which require the greatest effort

on the part of the body to break down and digest, are the real enemies of

human performance. Fats are becoming closely linked to many illnesses and

ailments. One reason why people drink so much coffee is to counteract the

drowsiness that occurs naturally in the morning because their stomachs are so

loaded down with fatty foods.

You see, the process of digestion is the activity of your body that consumes the

most energy. When you eat foods that are hard to digest, your body rushes

blood from everywhere to the digestive system to work to break them down. In

this process, the digestive system draws away blood from the brain and the

muscles. The reason you feel drowsy after a large meal is because the blood

has gone from your brain to your stomach. The reason you get cramps when

you engage in vigorous physical exercise immediately after eating is because a

substantial amount of blood has been drawn from your muscles to aid in the

process of digestion.

The key is to eat lightly and healthily. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Eat more

whole-grain products. In his book Eat to Win, Robert Haas says that your diet

should be comprised of 75 percent carbohydrates, 15 percent fats and only 10

percent proteins. Since the average diet in America contains as much as 50

percent fats and proteins, there is ample room to improve. And every move

that you make toward a high-carbohydrate diet will give you more energy and

make you sharper in everything you do.

Think and Speak Positively

In preparing for success throughout the day, you should also talk to yourself in

a positive way. The work by Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of

Pennsylvania has demonstrated that the way you talk to yourself largely

determines your emotions, how you feel about yourself on a minute-to-minute

basis.

If you don’t deliberately and consciously think about what you want, and talk to

yourself in a positive way, your mind will tend to slip toward your worries and

your concerns. And negative thinking takes the edge off your personality and

your enthusiasm, which is so important to your success with people.

A few years ago, Dr. Abraham Zaleznik of Harvard University did an interesting

study on disappointment. He found that successful people bounce back from

disappointments far faster than unsuccessful people do.

And what I’ve learned is that the key to your keeping yourself positive and

optimistic is preparation in advance of the ups and downs that you’ll experience

each day. For example, if you’re in sales, change the way you talk to yourself

by viewing yourself as a “rejection specialist” rather than a “sales specialist.” If

you define yourself as a sales specialist, you’ll be setting yourself up for failure,

disappointment and lowered self-esteem with every rejection you get. But, on

the other hand, if you look upon yourself as a rejection specialist, you’ll be

setting yourself up to feel like a winner every time someone turns you down for

any reason. You can look upon every rejection as a percentage of a sale. If it

takes you 20 calls to make a sale, you can look upon a rejection as 5 percent

of the commission that you receive for making that sale. In this way, every

person you speak to actually pays you money. You simply collect it when you

make the sale that is inevitable when you speak to enough people. Every time

someone turns you down, you’re a winner. You’re just that much farther

ahead. You’re just a little bit closer to the sale that must come if you keep on

keeping on.

Use every setback or disappointment as a spur to greater effort. Decide that

nothing will ever get you down. Decide that you will bounce back instead of

break. Develop a resilient or hardy personality. Become the kind of person who

is always cheerful, no matter what happens on the outside. Develop an attitude

of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that

every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than

your current situation. In this way, you become a far more resourceful and

effective person. Preparing mentally, you become almost unstoppable.

If you’re making sales calls, resist the “parking-lot mentality” of the average

salesperson. The average salesperson doesn’t think about the client until he

drives onto the parking lot, and he stops thinking about the client when he

drives off. Instead, prepare thoroughly for each call. Review your file of notes

on the customer, and establish a clear set of call objectives before you go in.

Know what you’re doing and why. Be very clear on what you want to

accomplish with this call. If a person were to ask you how you would judge

whether or not this upcoming call was successful, you should be able to tell

that person exactly what you want to accomplish, and after the call, you should

be able to tell that person exactly what you achieved. Most salespeople never

do this. When you ask them if a call was successful, they don’t know how to

answer you or how to base it. But this is not for you.

Be Prepared

In everything you do, preparation is the key. If you want to be ready for

success, you have to plant the seeds well in advance of the harvest that you

expect. Do what the winners do: Think on paper. Memorize the winner’s creed:

“Everything counts.” Everything you do is either moving you toward your goals

or moving you away. Everything is either helping you or hurting you. Nothing is

neutral. Everything counts.

A successful businessman was once asked for advice by a young person on

how he could be more successful faster. The businessman told him that the key

to his success had been to “get good” at his job.

The young man said, “I’m already good at what I do.”

The businessman then said, “Well, get better!”

The young man, somewhat self-satisfied, said, “Well, I’m already better than

most people.”

To that, the businessman replied, “Then be the best.”

Those are three of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard: Get good. Get

better. Be the best!

Remember, we live in a knowledge-based society, and knowledge in every field

is doubling approximately every seven years. This means that you must double

your knowledge in your field every seven years just to stay even. You’re

already “maxxed out” at your current level of knowledge and skill. You’ve

reached the ceiling in your career with your current talents and abilities. If you

want to go faster and farther, you must get back to work and begin to prepare

yourself for greater heights. You must put aside the newspaper, turn off the

television, politely excuse yourself from aimless socializing and get back to

working on yourself.

A quotation by Abraham Lincoln had a great influence on my life when I was

15. It was a statement he made when he was a young lawyer in Springfield,

Illinois. He said, “I will study and prepare myself, and someday my chance will

come.”

If you study and prepare yourself, your chance will come as well. There is

nothing that you cannot accomplish if you’ll invest the effort to get yourself

ready for the success that you desire. And there is nothing that can stop you

but your own lack of preparation.

Let me end with this beautiful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Those

heights by great men won and kept; / Were not achieved by sudden flight; /

But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night”

Your possibilities are endless, your potential is unlimited, and your future opens

up before you when you prepare yourself for the success that must inevitably

be yours.

Jorge U. Saguinsin

"Be the best, do your best, expect the best"